Background & Setting
In the recent years, English as a Second Language learners (ESLs) has made up a substantial proportion of the Singapore university enrolment, enriching the linguistic and cultural diversity on our local campuses. Similarly on studies closer to our shores, it was also shown that most Malaysian students who entered university also lacked vocabulary for academic writing purposes, as Asian students are hardly exposed to academic discourse during secondary school education, only to be assimilated at the tertiary level (Mokhtar, 2010). Significantly, studies revealed that academic success in university and academic writing are complementary, and if you will, two sides of the coin, where academic writing is likened to the language of scholarship, one that manifests eligibility of higher education (Hedge, 2000).
Introducing Academic Vocabulary
As above, the rigours and importance of academic writing are becoming increasingly dominant in the tertiary context, valued as a desired skill in students. In the case of ESLs however, academic writing is often perceived as overwhelming, attributed mainly from their lack of academic vocabulary competency, an impediment in the neophyte’s pursuit of academic prestige. To elucidate, Academic vocabulary refers to the words that are used in academic discourse, that occur with relatively high frequency across academic disciplines. Notably, academic language is specialized due to the need to convey abstract, technical, antithetic ideas and phenomena that are not generally examined in contexts that are characterized by social or casual discourse. Hence, the learning of academic vocabulary, as expounded upon by Nation (2008), Hinkel (2004) and Coxhead (2006), is often expedited through Word Lists, like the General Service List (GSL) (West, 1953) and the modernized Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000). While the AWL has been used in developing academic language courses, and its lists incorporated in different types of language tests (Nation, 2001; Shaw & Liu, 1998), in reality, how practical is the AWL, and is it well suited for our local educational context? Thus, this article aims to debunk its strengths and weaknesses, as well as pedagogical implications in the classroom.
Academic Word List
The AWL was developed by Averil Coxhead (2000) which comprises of 570 word families frequently used in a corpus of academic texts, from a wide range of disciplines; science, law, arts and commerce. It focuses on academic words and excludes the most common 2,000 words from the GSL, and is systematized into 10 sub-lists, from the most to least frequent word families to occur. As outlined by Storch & Tapper (2009), the AWL was envisioned as a reference for tertiary students who study English, covering up to 10% of the vocabulary used in academic texts.
Strengths
The following elucidates why the AWL is widely known as a bench mark for developing teaching materials for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) (Schmitt & Schmitt, 2005). Firstly, due to the constraints of time, and the need for EAP teachers to equip their students with academic vocabulary, the AWL is undoubtedly useful for direct and relevant vocabulary acquisition. This is supported by Hoshino’s (2010) study, where Japanese EFL students’ increased command of vocabulary was attributed to the AWL, with the author claiming it to be “an effective list for L2 vocabulary learning”. Additionally, as revealed by Coxhead & Nation (2001), learning is also facilitated by the AWL’s smaller, frequency-based sub-lists, which progressively help in the planning and teaching, that a methodical approach to vocabulary can be adopted.
Weaknesses
But is the AWL useful to all, or just a specific set of students? Coxhead makes a few presumptions in formulating the AWL. Firstly, Paquot (2007) reveals that not all members of a word family have equivalent frequency in academic texts (consider the verb itemise), and might not be all useful to students. Additionally, the words are listed without supplementary information such as inflection properties, definitions, or collocations, making it a tall order for EFL learners, having to acquire the words out of context (Hyland & Tse, 2007).
Correspondingly, Coxhead (2000) expects the combination of the AWL with the GSL to encompass approximately 86% of academic scripts, with the AWL itself encompassing 10%. However, Martinez et al (2009) claims that the AWL and GSL only accounted for approximately 77% of agricultural texts (p. 188), subjacent to the 86% stipulated by Coxhead (2000). Hancioğlu et al (2008) also enumerated that AWL’s scope of academic texts varies depending on the discipline of discourse, and observed that they fluctuated 13.8% to 16.1% from Coxhead’s criterion (p. 471), suggesting that certain disciplines might be better covered than others. Thus, this highlights the issue of certain disciplines utilizing more distinct jargon and terminology than others, a need that may not be addressed by the AWL.
Pedagogical Implications
Having expounded on the possible pitfalls of the AWL, some suggestions would be made on how to better tackle such issues in the local context. Firstly, in lieu of the unequal frequency observed from members of each word family, and how the AWL lacks supplementary information, such as definitions and collocational examples, it is thus on the onus of the teacher to winnow the chaff and assist the student's acquisition of academic vocabulary through numerous exposures to academic lexis; well contextualized examples to opportune the students' usage in writing about relevant disciplines (Lessard-Clouston, 2012). This can be achieved by using course textbooks that teaches vocabulary from particular lists, as publicized by Capel (2010). At present, various series like Oxford’s five-level Inside Reading series and Michigan’s three-level Vocabulary Mastery series methodically delineates the 570 items on the AWL, and employs diversified vocabulary-learning approaches into vocabulary learning, with clarified collocational examples, catering to High-Medium-Low Ability students (Wells & Valcourt, 2010). With these, local EAP teachers, could then effectively employ the different lessons and activities to facilitate the learning of academic vocabulary, as well as retreading the supplementary paucity of the AWL.
In the same fashion, if certain disciplines do have more exclusive terminology than others, it may be wise to expose EFL learners not just to the AWL, but also word lists contingent to the students' disciplines of focus. Hence, the educator should supplement the AWL with discipline-specific word lists, like the Engineering Word List and Geological Word List, from www.myvocabulary.com, to name a few. Correspondingly, like Vongpumivitch et al (2009) suggests, educators should peruse through the word families of the AWL, to capitalize on those most relevant to the discipline of mention, and integrate it with the word lists of the specific discipline. With this in mind, teachers who contemplate utilizing the AWL should weigh the following ramifications against their course objectives: 1. Are the learners from a single discipline? 2. Would utilizing the AWL prepare them for the requirements of their discipline? 3. Will they need more specialized vocabulary in their academic discipline? Such lead-on questions would thus accredit the teacher to better adjust his/her teaching techniques, to assist in better managing students’ vocabulary acquisition.
Conclusion
In conclusion, to deal with shortfalls in ESLs’ repertoire of nouns ubiquitous in academic texts, a concerted effort has to be made to expound the learner's vocabulary range and insight. Considering that teaching academic vocabulary as cornerstones for success in the academics may be dreary, per contra, an integral aspect of high-quality academic writing, it pays to be sanguine as educators, to meritoriously employ the numerous modus operandi to expedite, as Tickoo (2003: 216) says, “a ‘web of associations’ of diverse styles which give every new word, word form and word meaning a robust base in the learner’s mind.” The transcendent aim of all ESL educators, of course, would be to stimulate self-reliance and autonomy in learners, and to realize this, abetting self-determining and efficient vocabulary learning strategies of the AWL, as well as tempering it with the educator's acumen and clear understanding of students' learning needs could prove most efficacious, to allow the student a better grasp of the Word.
Word Count: 1239
References
Capel, A. (2010). A1-B2 vocabulary: Insights and issues arising from the English Profile Wordlists project. English Profile Journal, 1, e3. doi:10.1017/S2041536210000048
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213-238
Coxhead, A. (2006). Essentials of teaching academic vocabulary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Coxhead, A. and P. Nation. (2001). The specialised vocabulary of English for Academic Purposes, in J. Flowerdew and M. Peacock (eds.) Research Perspectives on English for Academic Purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hancioğlu, N., Neufeld, S. and Eldridge, J. (2008). Through the looking glass and into the land of lexico-grammar. English for Specific Purposes 27(4): 459-479.
Hedge, T. (2000). Teaching and learning in the language classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hinkel, E. (2004). Teaching academic esl writing. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates
Hoshino, Y. (2010). The categorical facilitation effects on L2 vocabulary learning in a classroom setting. RELC Journal, 41, 301-312. doi:10.1177/0033688210380558.
Hyland, K. and P. Tse 2007. ‘Is There an “Academic Vocabulary”’? TESOL Quarterly 41:2: 235–253.
Lessard-Clouston, M. (2012). Technical vocabulary use in English-medium disciplinary writing: A native/non-native case study. The Linguistics Journal,6, 127-150.
Martinez, I. A., Beck, S. C., & Panza, C. B. (2009). Academic vocabulary in agriculture research articles: A corpus-based study. English for Specific Purposes , 183-198.
Mokhtar, A.A. (2010). Achieving native-like English lexical knowledge: The non-native story. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 1(4): 343-352.
Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nation, I. S. P. (2008). Teaching vocabulary. Boston, MA: Heinle.
Paquot, M. (2007). Towards a Productively-oriented Academic Word List. In: J. Walinski, K. Kredens and S. Gozdz-Roszkowski (eds.), Corpora and ICT in Language Studies. PALC 2005. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 127–140.
Schmitt, D. & Schmitt, N. (2005). Focus on vocabulary. White Plains, NY: Longman
Shaw, P., & Liu, E.T.K. (1998). What develops in the development of second language writing. Applied Linguistics, 19, 225-254.
Storch, N., & Tapper, J. (2009). The impact of an EAP course on postgraduate writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8, 207-223.
Tickoo, M.L. (2003). Teaching and learning English: A source book for teachers and teacher-trainers. New Delhi: Orient Longman.
Wells, L., & Valcourt, G. (2010). Vocabulary mastery 3: Using and learning the academic word list. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
West, M. (1953). A general service list of english words. London: Longmans, Green.
In the recent years, English as a Second Language learners (ESLs) has made up a substantial proportion of the Singapore university enrolment, enriching the linguistic and cultural diversity on our local campuses. Similarly on studies closer to our shores, it was also shown that most Malaysian students who entered university also lacked vocabulary for academic writing purposes, as Asian students are hardly exposed to academic discourse during secondary school education, only to be assimilated at the tertiary level (Mokhtar, 2010). Significantly, studies revealed that academic success in university and academic writing are complementary, and if you will, two sides of the coin, where academic writing is likened to the language of scholarship, one that manifests eligibility of higher education (Hedge, 2000).
Introducing Academic Vocabulary
As above, the rigours and importance of academic writing are becoming increasingly dominant in the tertiary context, valued as a desired skill in students. In the case of ESLs however, academic writing is often perceived as overwhelming, attributed mainly from their lack of academic vocabulary competency, an impediment in the neophyte’s pursuit of academic prestige. To elucidate, Academic vocabulary refers to the words that are used in academic discourse, that occur with relatively high frequency across academic disciplines. Notably, academic language is specialized due to the need to convey abstract, technical, antithetic ideas and phenomena that are not generally examined in contexts that are characterized by social or casual discourse. Hence, the learning of academic vocabulary, as expounded upon by Nation (2008), Hinkel (2004) and Coxhead (2006), is often expedited through Word Lists, like the General Service List (GSL) (West, 1953) and the modernized Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000). While the AWL has been used in developing academic language courses, and its lists incorporated in different types of language tests (Nation, 2001; Shaw & Liu, 1998), in reality, how practical is the AWL, and is it well suited for our local educational context? Thus, this article aims to debunk its strengths and weaknesses, as well as pedagogical implications in the classroom.
Academic Word List
The AWL was developed by Averil Coxhead (2000) which comprises of 570 word families frequently used in a corpus of academic texts, from a wide range of disciplines; science, law, arts and commerce. It focuses on academic words and excludes the most common 2,000 words from the GSL, and is systematized into 10 sub-lists, from the most to least frequent word families to occur. As outlined by Storch & Tapper (2009), the AWL was envisioned as a reference for tertiary students who study English, covering up to 10% of the vocabulary used in academic texts.
Strengths
The following elucidates why the AWL is widely known as a bench mark for developing teaching materials for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) (Schmitt & Schmitt, 2005). Firstly, due to the constraints of time, and the need for EAP teachers to equip their students with academic vocabulary, the AWL is undoubtedly useful for direct and relevant vocabulary acquisition. This is supported by Hoshino’s (2010) study, where Japanese EFL students’ increased command of vocabulary was attributed to the AWL, with the author claiming it to be “an effective list for L2 vocabulary learning”. Additionally, as revealed by Coxhead & Nation (2001), learning is also facilitated by the AWL’s smaller, frequency-based sub-lists, which progressively help in the planning and teaching, that a methodical approach to vocabulary can be adopted.
Weaknesses
But is the AWL useful to all, or just a specific set of students? Coxhead makes a few presumptions in formulating the AWL. Firstly, Paquot (2007) reveals that not all members of a word family have equivalent frequency in academic texts (consider the verb itemise), and might not be all useful to students. Additionally, the words are listed without supplementary information such as inflection properties, definitions, or collocations, making it a tall order for EFL learners, having to acquire the words out of context (Hyland & Tse, 2007).
Correspondingly, Coxhead (2000) expects the combination of the AWL with the GSL to encompass approximately 86% of academic scripts, with the AWL itself encompassing 10%. However, Martinez et al (2009) claims that the AWL and GSL only accounted for approximately 77% of agricultural texts (p. 188), subjacent to the 86% stipulated by Coxhead (2000). Hancioğlu et al (2008) also enumerated that AWL’s scope of academic texts varies depending on the discipline of discourse, and observed that they fluctuated 13.8% to 16.1% from Coxhead’s criterion (p. 471), suggesting that certain disciplines might be better covered than others. Thus, this highlights the issue of certain disciplines utilizing more distinct jargon and terminology than others, a need that may not be addressed by the AWL.
Pedagogical Implications
Having expounded on the possible pitfalls of the AWL, some suggestions would be made on how to better tackle such issues in the local context. Firstly, in lieu of the unequal frequency observed from members of each word family, and how the AWL lacks supplementary information, such as definitions and collocational examples, it is thus on the onus of the teacher to winnow the chaff and assist the student's acquisition of academic vocabulary through numerous exposures to academic lexis; well contextualized examples to opportune the students' usage in writing about relevant disciplines (Lessard-Clouston, 2012). This can be achieved by using course textbooks that teaches vocabulary from particular lists, as publicized by Capel (2010). At present, various series like Oxford’s five-level Inside Reading series and Michigan’s three-level Vocabulary Mastery series methodically delineates the 570 items on the AWL, and employs diversified vocabulary-learning approaches into vocabulary learning, with clarified collocational examples, catering to High-Medium-Low Ability students (Wells & Valcourt, 2010). With these, local EAP teachers, could then effectively employ the different lessons and activities to facilitate the learning of academic vocabulary, as well as retreading the supplementary paucity of the AWL.
In the same fashion, if certain disciplines do have more exclusive terminology than others, it may be wise to expose EFL learners not just to the AWL, but also word lists contingent to the students' disciplines of focus. Hence, the educator should supplement the AWL with discipline-specific word lists, like the Engineering Word List and Geological Word List, from www.myvocabulary.com, to name a few. Correspondingly, like Vongpumivitch et al (2009) suggests, educators should peruse through the word families of the AWL, to capitalize on those most relevant to the discipline of mention, and integrate it with the word lists of the specific discipline. With this in mind, teachers who contemplate utilizing the AWL should weigh the following ramifications against their course objectives: 1. Are the learners from a single discipline? 2. Would utilizing the AWL prepare them for the requirements of their discipline? 3. Will they need more specialized vocabulary in their academic discipline? Such lead-on questions would thus accredit the teacher to better adjust his/her teaching techniques, to assist in better managing students’ vocabulary acquisition.
Conclusion
In conclusion, to deal with shortfalls in ESLs’ repertoire of nouns ubiquitous in academic texts, a concerted effort has to be made to expound the learner's vocabulary range and insight. Considering that teaching academic vocabulary as cornerstones for success in the academics may be dreary, per contra, an integral aspect of high-quality academic writing, it pays to be sanguine as educators, to meritoriously employ the numerous modus operandi to expedite, as Tickoo (2003: 216) says, “a ‘web of associations’ of diverse styles which give every new word, word form and word meaning a robust base in the learner’s mind.” The transcendent aim of all ESL educators, of course, would be to stimulate self-reliance and autonomy in learners, and to realize this, abetting self-determining and efficient vocabulary learning strategies of the AWL, as well as tempering it with the educator's acumen and clear understanding of students' learning needs could prove most efficacious, to allow the student a better grasp of the Word.
Word Count: 1239
References
Capel, A. (2010). A1-B2 vocabulary: Insights and issues arising from the English Profile Wordlists project. English Profile Journal, 1, e3. doi:10.1017/S2041536210000048
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213-238
Coxhead, A. (2006). Essentials of teaching academic vocabulary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Coxhead, A. and P. Nation. (2001). The specialised vocabulary of English for Academic Purposes, in J. Flowerdew and M. Peacock (eds.) Research Perspectives on English for Academic Purposes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hancioğlu, N., Neufeld, S. and Eldridge, J. (2008). Through the looking glass and into the land of lexico-grammar. English for Specific Purposes 27(4): 459-479.
Hedge, T. (2000). Teaching and learning in the language classroom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hinkel, E. (2004). Teaching academic esl writing. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates
Hoshino, Y. (2010). The categorical facilitation effects on L2 vocabulary learning in a classroom setting. RELC Journal, 41, 301-312. doi:10.1177/0033688210380558.
Hyland, K. and P. Tse 2007. ‘Is There an “Academic Vocabulary”’? TESOL Quarterly 41:2: 235–253.
Lessard-Clouston, M. (2012). Technical vocabulary use in English-medium disciplinary writing: A native/non-native case study. The Linguistics Journal,6, 127-150.
Martinez, I. A., Beck, S. C., & Panza, C. B. (2009). Academic vocabulary in agriculture research articles: A corpus-based study. English for Specific Purposes , 183-198.
Mokhtar, A.A. (2010). Achieving native-like English lexical knowledge: The non-native story. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 1(4): 343-352.
Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nation, I. S. P. (2008). Teaching vocabulary. Boston, MA: Heinle.
Paquot, M. (2007). Towards a Productively-oriented Academic Word List. In: J. Walinski, K. Kredens and S. Gozdz-Roszkowski (eds.), Corpora and ICT in Language Studies. PALC 2005. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 127–140.
Schmitt, D. & Schmitt, N. (2005). Focus on vocabulary. White Plains, NY: Longman
Shaw, P., & Liu, E.T.K. (1998). What develops in the development of second language writing. Applied Linguistics, 19, 225-254.
Storch, N., & Tapper, J. (2009). The impact of an EAP course on postgraduate writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 8, 207-223.
Tickoo, M.L. (2003). Teaching and learning English: A source book for teachers and teacher-trainers. New Delhi: Orient Longman.
Wells, L., & Valcourt, G. (2010). Vocabulary mastery 3: Using and learning the academic word list. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
West, M. (1953). A general service list of english words. London: Longmans, Green.